Fundamentals of Water Treatment Processes: Physical, Chemical, and Biological

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Why You Should Learn About Water Treatment

Drinking water quality is in the news every day. Today, customers are more and more engaged in the quality of water in their community, and have concerns about disinfection by products, lead, and legionella in piping systems.

The challenges with drinking water treatment are diverse and make it one of the most interesting fields in civil engineering: new contaminants are found like PFAS or PFOS in groundwaters, or algal toxins are detected because of a bloom of cyanobacteria in a surface water.

Public water systems are developing new sources that require treatment. Sometimes these new sources are difficult to treat – like highly saline groundwaters or advanced treatment for the indirect potable reuse of wastewater.

The instructor is currently working on a number of water treatment projects including work with a community in California that is dealing with groundwater treatment issues with naturally occurring hexavalent chromium, arsenic, and nitrate in their water supply. Mr. Odell is contributing to an international project for a client to expand their ceramic membrane treatment system to be the largest in the world. He is also working on designing a biological treatment system to remove ammonia.

Purpose & Background

This course provides a thorough understanding of the major unit processes used in water treatment, including chemical, physical, and biological processes. Several case studies throughout the course will illustrate how water utilities are incorporating multiple chemical, physical, and biological treatment processes into their water treatment plants. At the conclusion of this course, you will have a thorough understanding of the theory of the processes, as well as the real-world application of each unit process.